


You don’t see me standing here (I just came to say goodbye)

by LadyMerlin



Series: It’s like a train-wreck (beautiful and deadly) [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Addiction, Angst, Dancing, Drug Use, Episode: s03e02 The Sign of Three, F/M, Hints of other bad things that happened during the hiatus, Loneliness, M/M, Pining, Running Away, Sherlock Is Not Okay, Sherlock didn't get to dance, Sherlock is not taking this well, Sherlock loves dancing, The wedding, UST, Unrequited Love, john/mary - Freeform, one-sided john/sherlock, post-Reichenbach Fall, sherlock season 3, this is not a happy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 07:09:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1129792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyMerlin/pseuds/LadyMerlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a danger night. Sherlock knows this when he walks out of the wedding hall. There’s a voice in his head and it’s screaming, shrill and relentless, and he feels like he could claw his eyes out just to make it stop. He isn’t used to selflessness, but he has given everything he is, to John. Now, there’s nothing left. He has to get out. He has to leave. Staying will be the death of him, and he thinks there’s been quite enough of that going around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You don’t see me standing here (I just came to say goodbye)

**Author's Note:**

> AN: So. This fic has been eating my brain for a while now. There are three fics planned for this series, and hopefully they’ll all be posted before Sunday. There are a bunch of songs that I’ve been listening to on repeat, and if you’re interested you can listen to them too, to know exactly what kind of mood I’m in. Look at the notes below. I’ve used quite a few head canons from different places. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing. This was quickly beta’d by Lucy, but all remaining mistakes are mine. Thanks babe. The title of this fic comes from a very appropriate song called 'Dancing on my own' by Robyn, which you should listen to if you want feels.
> 
> Cross posted to [LJ](http://obsessionality.livejournal.com/125574.html)

London is home. It is where Sherlock thrives, surrounded by the constant noise and bustle of life; the neon lights and towering skyscrapers, the ever-present smog of low-grade evil and the unpredictability of its residents. In London, he is alive, and he can feel his heart beat steadily, surrounded by the people whom he chooses to watch over, whether they are aware of it or not.

When he was… _away_ , trying to solve every problem Moriarty had ever caused, he had longed for London. He had dreamt of coming home, to familiar grounds, to John and his friends, to Lestrade, Molly and Mrs. Hudson. He’d even missed Mycroft, as a part of London. His desire for London had weighed on him, like a physical ache, a burning deep in his belly, a constant itch under his skin. He had missed London relentlessly, her narrow alleyways, forever-wet pavements and the great stinking Thames regularly featuring in his dreamscape.

He’d used to wake up gasping for the achingly cold night air of London, feeling like he was suffocating without it. He had hungered for the feeling of cobblestones through his filthy shoes, and for the murky taste of hard tap-water, and oddly enough, the feeling of clean, dry socks.

When he walks out of the wedding hall, into the crisp evening of the city that occupies his heart, it doesn’t clear his head like he had hoped. He still feels like he’s inside, crowded and over-warm and gasping for breath, like there’s a great weight on his chest, compressing his ribcage.

It’s not the first time he’s felt this way. He knows about trauma. He knows about stress-induced disorders. He knows that he’s just human enough to have been affected by the things he’s seen, and done; just human enough to have been damaged in the face of inhumanity. But that’s honestly not what’s on his mind, this night.

Tonight, he needs to get away from the hall. The revelry is on-going, and he can hear it even by the main road. The people who live near this hall are accustomed to it. The month of May, he was told, is the most popular month of weddings, and they’re lucky to have managed a booking. Sherlock knows better than to believe in luck and coincidences. Mycroft had known the family who’d rented out the hall, and he’d made it happen. Mycroft hadn’t told Sherlock, but then, he hadn’t needed to.

It has been a harrowing day. A harrowing month. An _exhausting_ year. Every minute stretches into eternity, in his head. He hasn’t had the chance to really relax, since he got back. He is walking towards the nearest bus-stop, making a straight line towards Baker Street, because if he stops and sits down, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to stand up again.

A small part of him is thankful that no one has thought to ask what he’d been doing, or where he’d gone, during those two long years. He thinks Lestrade knows. Molly knows, because he’d told her. It had been necessary. Mycroft doesn’t have to be told, to know. But he doesn’t think John has asked. Or even thought twice about what he’d been doing. It should make him angry. It doesn’t. He is resigned to it. Because he has earned nothing better from those he would call friend.

He wants to be above self-pity. He doesn’t want to be pitied, at all as a matter of fact. But he’s pitying himself. He can’t afford to. If he starts, he’ll never stop.  There’s a voice screaming in his head and it won’t stop. It’s so loud in contrast to the silence and the stillness of the night. It’s screaming that if he were to fall off a bridge, no one would notice for at least 24 fours, and even then it would probably be a nameless operative who’d have noticed through a CCTV camera.

No one would notice, otherwise, that he was gone.

He’d thought he was done with the solitude, when he got back to London. He’s had more than enough of loneliness during his time away. But the voice is still here, and it’s making him crazy and he needs to get away from it. It was louder in the hall though, and he thinks he’s moving in the right direction. Away. He needs to get away. Out here on the empty street it’s easier to pretend that he’s alone by choice, rather than due to a lack of friends.

It’s freezing cold, and he’s got his chin tucked into his scarf, the collar of his coat turned up. His breath is coming out in white clouds of mist, smelling slightly like champagne, and mostly like nothing else. He wants to crawl into his bed and sleep for a thousand years, but he also wants to crawl out of his own skin and drown in a hot bath. He doesn’t want to think anymore, but his brain won’t stop.

He knows exactly what is wrong with him. Down to the specifics. He has a list of things, and Mycroft has a file (as he always does, the smug bastard), but he knows exactly what this is.

This is a danger night.

And he knows exactly why.

That’s the thing, though. People, Mrs. Hudson mostly, has been very vocal about him and John being a couple. Vocal to the point of shrillness. John has denied her with equal voracity, every single time. It’s the only time John Watson has ever raised his voice to Mrs. Hudson. That he knows of, anyway, apart from that one time when she told him about her hip replacement. John clearly doesn’t like the idea of him and Sherlock being together. And that’s fine. Sherlock learned a long time ago that he’s a hard man to love.

That doesn’t mean he hasn’t held out a fool’s hope, that John will love him anyway.

-

_There is a warm hand on the small of his back, and a smaller body tucked under his chin. They are dancing the way lovers would dance, but the room is silent and still, and they are moving to the beating of John Watson’s heart, steady and unfailing. Sherlock thinks he could set his clocks by the beating of John’s heart, but the thought disintegrates because he can feel John’s soft hair under his chin and he smells like corner-store shampoo and hospital disinfectants and Sherlock wants to bottle it because it smells like home._

_But Mrs. Hudson is coming up the stairs and John jumps away from him like he’s been burned, and he shoots Sherlock a look as if to say, ‘don’t want her to think that again, right?’ and Sherlock doesn’t agree. He wants Mrs. Hudson to think it, and Molly to think it, and Lestrade to think it; he wants it to be true. But he smiles and nods anyway._

-

He finds Raz napping under a bridge; not his customary spot. He’s got his bag of spray cans beside him, and his eyes open wide the moment he hears Sherlock step deliberately into his space. His pupils are normally sized. Sherlock has caught him at a good moment. They must make a strange picture; a homeless man and a man dressed in a very expensive tuxedo, with grief etched into his features, standing under a bridge. People will draw conclusions, the John in his head says, but he ignores the voice.

He knows very well that it’s not normal to respond to the voices in your head. He’s been taken to enough therapists and psychiatrists in his life, thank you very much. It’s not normal to fake your death for the people you love, either, so clearly their standards are skewed.

“Raz,” he says, and it’s a greeting and many other indecipherable things, all in one small word. He likes Raz.

“Mr. ‘Olmes,” Raz responds, not moving to get up but smiling at him all the same. It’s a long standing joke. When he met Raz, he’d not been much of anything, let alone a ‘Mister Holmes’.

Sherlock takes out his wallet, very aware that Raz is watching him like a hawk. He hands over a substantial sum of money, very carefully, in crisp unmarked bills. “I’d like you to get me some clean Heroin, please, Raz.”

Raz freezes and sits up slowly, the expression on his face reminiscent of a deer in the headlights. He imagines it’s the way he looked when John had told him he was getting married. Or not. He doesn’t know. Unfortunately he’s taught the kid a lot, and contrary to what John thinks, Raz likes him too. They used to live together, years ago when Sherlock had done his stint as a homeless man. His mother had laughed at the idea of a homeless Holmes, but she, unlike Mycroft, had understood exactly why he needed to familiarise himself with the city. She liked legwork, unlike Mycroft. The addiction had been an unexpected consequence, and she’d been very disappointed in him.

Her disappointment had been one of the main reasons he’d finally quit the habit, along with Lestrade’s constant badgering and Mycroft’s threats. He’d dragged Raz through withdrawal with him.

He knows what he’s doing is impossibly cruel. Raz used to be an addict too. It would once have been enough to dissuade him. Once. Tonight, he feels like he’s hollow, like his eyes are on fire, and it’s a miracle he can still see straight. He wants to be blinding drunk, right now. He wants to forget, and pretend he’s not there. He wants to be someone else and if getting on his knees and praying to a god he didn’t believe in would result in him being someone else, just for a while, he’d do it. He hasn’t felt this desperate in a long time. The pressure is building up inside him and he feels like he’s going to burst any moment, and he doesn’t know what it means, just that he doesn’t like it. Just that it hurts, and that he wants it to stop.

“Sherlock,” he starts, and then pauses. “Boss, where’s the doctor?”

And isn’t that the question at the heart of the issue? _Where’s the doctor, indeed_. “He’s getting married tonight, Raz.” Strictly inaccurate, as John was married several hours ago, but Sherlock thinks the truth can afford to be stretched this much.

“Christ,” he says, and then again, “Christ.” With much more finality the second time. Sherlock doesn’t know what it means, except he kind of does. He must be blindingly obvious, then, in his regard for John. He’s not surprised. Sherlock has lost control of this, whatever _this_ was, a long time ago. Mycroft was right. He is involved. Too deeply involved. He doesn’t know how to stop, though. He doesn’t know he would, even if he could.

“I won’t involve you, Raz. I’ll get out of your hair. I’d not bother you, but I’ve lost touch with all my contacts. I need something,” he says, and he’s very aware that he sounds like an addict, the desperation written in the emphasis of every other word. These are the lines they used to spout years ago, when they were younger and infinitely more stupid. Even Raz recognizes it. But it’s true. He knows London better than anyone else. If he doesn’t want to be found, he can hide.

He can hide in some dark corner of this great city, somewhere even the homeless don’t go. He can hide in the darkest corners and huddle in his coat on the dirty ground and get so blindingly high he can’t see. So high he can’t remember his own name. That’s what he wants. Oblivion. He’s salivating for it, his instincts kicking into gear. The skin on his left forearm is itching slightly, and he wants it _so_ badly, he can’t function. He hasn’t been functioning for a while, though, so this is nothing new.

Mycroft would say that he’s substituting one addiction for another. Mycroft can go and suck it.

“Sherlock, I can’t do that.” And that’s certainly something he hasn’t been expecting.

“What?” he demands, more sharp than he had intended. “What do you mean?” this is the addict speaking. He can hear himself, as if from a distance away. He knows why he’d been handling this whole evening so well. He’s been watching from above, detached from the happenings. His body is a puppet, and his mind and his heart are not in contact with it. He thinks that if he’d been himself today, the wedding speech would have gone much worse, and there would have been crying. And not the good type.

But the addict has taken over, because he’s been away for too long. And without anyone there to stop him, well. Apparently Raz has decided to fill that role himself.

“We’re clean, Sherlock,” he says, and he reaches out to put a hand on Sherlock’s forearm, and Sherlock wants to shake him off, he wants to _fight_. But this is Raz, who taught him to live on the streets years ago. This is Raz, who took care of him like a brother, but in places where Mycroft had no influence. “You’ll regret this.”

“I regret everything, as it is, Raz,” and no, he hadn’t intended to say that either, but what’s been done is done. He’s managed to avoid pity thus far, but he’s not unaware of the way Mrs. Hudson looks at him. Or Molly. When they think he can’t see them.

Raz looks devastated. He’s on his feet and hugging Sherlock before he can say anything, quietly slipping the money back into Sherlock’s coat pocket. Sherlock’s slipping yet more money into Raz’s other pocket, because it’s cold outside, and Raz refuses to stay with him. He says it’s a matter of pride, but Sherlock knows it’s because the man thinks he cannot unlearn the habits of a lifetime of being homeless.

“Stay with me, Sherlock. Don’t go off on your own.”

Sherlock seriously considers the offer. But the desperation is still pounding in his head, and his saliva glands have gone into overdrive. He’s a risk, now. He needs to get out. If there ever were a danger night, it is tonight. If he stays here, he will get his hands on something. He has learned the hard way to not underestimate the resourcefulness of the addict. He shakes his head. “I think I’ll go home. Get out of London, for a while.”

“He’ll notice you missing, you know?” Raz asks, and it’s not a question because yes, Sherlock knows. But his hands are shaking, and it’s not from the cold. It’s from grief, and shock. He’s in shock. John will be too busy to notice him missing, until it’s too late. Sherlock nods.

“Will you come with me? My mother will be glad to have you.” And it’s true. His mother knows about his friends from his days on the streets. He owes Raz a great deal, and his mother likes the idea of Sherlock having friends in low places. He’s never claimed to have a normal family life. Raz shakes his head, but walks him to the train station anyway.

Raz keeps up a stream of mindless chatter, the whole way there. About the comings and goings of the London underground. About the night markets and the people who happen to be in charge, this week. Sherlock never understood how Mycroft didn’t find underground politics far more interesting than politics in parliament. Nothing in parliament ever ended in fistfights and knives to the gut. Mycroft had never approved of his blood thirsty edge. He was a bloody pacifist. Or at least, he was too snobby to get his hands a little dirty.

Sherlock’s always loved getting messy, for all the airs he put on. He likes putting on airs too. He likes pretending to be different people. It’s the greatest game he could ever play. He likes shedding his skin and becoming someone else, for a day, a week. For a year, if he needed to. He’s always enjoyed hunting for things in dirty alleyways and dumpsters.

Once upon a time, he’d liked to think of it as reaching his fingers into the city’s guts. Exactly 8 months ago, he had to reach into a man’s guts, while his heart was still beating, to retrieve a very valuable piece of information. It had been wet, and stinking, and so impossibly hot. He’d gone back to his hostel room and paid extra for a bucket of scalding hot water, and even after using it all to wash his hands, he hadn’t felt clean. He won’t be making that comparison ever again.

-

_Raz knows that Sherlock doesn’t hate his brother. Sherlock really doesn’t. They don’t get along, and having met the overbearing man more than once in his life, Raz isn’t surprised. Mycroft is the kind of person who’d cause even the calmest person to rebel, because he’s snobbish and condescending and sometimes Raz would do anything to punch the man in his face._

_But he’s never seen Sherlock like this. Not in almost a decade, he thinks. He remembers what they were like, back in the day. When they were high more than they were sober, and they spent entire days doing inadvisable things and then giggling like children about their misdeeds. He hasn’t seen Sherlock this badly affected in a long time. He sees the man off on a train, and tells himself that Sherlock’s safely out of London, and that if he’d skipped the train Raz would have caught him. He’s under no illusions about Sherlock Holmes’ intelligence, and ability to sneak about. But he hopes, for Sherlock’s sake, that he’s safely out of London._

_And he knows that if (and when) Sherlock finds out about this, he’ll never forgive Raz. But he’ll take his chances. Because Sherlock is singular. He’s never met anyone like him. And he’s kind, and he genuinely considers Raz a friend, and that’s more valuable than anything else. If he loses the friendship to save Sherlock’s life, even if he loses his only friend, he’ll take it. He knows where the cameras are. He doesn’t have money for a phone-call, but he knows that the cameras near 221B Baker Street are more active than any other cameras in the area. He sits on the steps of the flat and makes direct eye-contact with the one across the street. If you could make eye-contact with a camera. Whatever. When the nearest phone box starts ringing, he rolls his eyes and picks it up._

_“Mr. Holmes,” he says, and he tries to swallow down his nervousness – this Holmes brother makes his skin crawl. “It’s about Sherlock. He’s not doing well. He tried to get heroin, today.”_

_There’s a pause before the familiar voice speaks. “Did you provide him with anything?” he asks, and Raz wants to roll his eyes and hit the phone on the wall of the booth, but that’s not going to do him any good._

_He rolls his eyes anyway, because it’s the less destructive response. “No,” he spits,_ you bastard _going unsaid. “I sent him home. To Mrs. Holmes. Out of London.”_

_There’s a deep sigh, and Raz is good at body language, at judging tones and voices and stuff. He doesn’t have a degree or anything, but he’s got more life experience than anyone who’d have written a book about it. The man on the line with him sounds regretful, and exhausted. “Thank you, Mr. Bence,” he says, and Raz tries not to shiver. It’s been a long time since he’s gone by that name._

_“I didn’t do it for you, mate,” he responds, and hangs up, because there’s only so much weirdness he can take in one night._

_Sherlock has family who care for him in their own weird way. Sherlock is in need of someone to take care of him. If Raz has to mingle with the devil, he’ll do it, for Sherlock._

-

The country manor is as familiar to him as the back of his hand. In that curious way of childhood places, it seems much smaller than he remembers it. He knows the reasoning behind the phenomenon, of course, but he hadn’t expected his own brain to be susceptible to the same tricks. Vaguely he thinks he might have to take that into consideration, when using old geographical data. The prize-winning rose bushes are the same as they were thirty years ago, in full bloom this time of year. The knocker on the front door has changed, and his mother has installed a CCTV camera in the wooden gate, disguised as a carving of a bird.

Walking through the front gates is a surreal experience, because it is exactly the same, but at the same time so completely different as to be alien. He knows why, though. Because while it has not changed, he _has_. Reading material had been scarce while he’d been travelling. He remembers having read it in a cheap magazine, on a train somewhere in Northern India, in an article about being away from home. It had occurred to him then, that the statement rung true for returning to his childhood home. He isn’t sure why it hadn’t occurred to him in the context of returning to London.

It is the London he remembers, but he is not the same Sherlock Holmes who left it, all those years ago.

221B Baker Street was exactly the same; furniture and detritus preserved perfectly under dust sheets. John was exactly the same as he had been, if a little sadder and a lot more angry. Mrs. Hudson was the same. Mycroft hadn’t changed since he hit puberty. Sherlock was the one who had changed. He was like a puzzle piece with the edges bent out of shape; he’d never quite fit in again. From a distance the picture would look complete, but it would never hold up to close scrutiny. He’d never hold up to close scrutiny.

He knocks on the door instead of ringing the door bell, because loud ringing noises always startle his father. They’d always startled John, too.

His mother opens the door, and seeing her face is enough to lift a huge burden off his shoulders. He still feels hollow inside, with his thoughts knocking about in his head and making lots of unnecessary noise, but her presence is like a balm. Mycroft can say what he wants, about Sherlock being a mummy’s boy. He’d cared about many things, but he’s never once cared about this. He drops his bag and hugs her, and it is as much a greeting as a warning of how off kilter Sherlock is. They both know that. They don’t do hugs. Not normally. It is a better reunion than his confrontation with John and Mary. His mother’s arms feel like home.

“May I stay with you, Mummy?” he asks, and it’s foolish he knows, he shouldn’t even have to ask that.

But he’s faced too many rejections in the past months to be feeling secure about anything. He knows, objectively, that his mother will never turn him away, not when he’s come willingly to her doorstep. Never when he needs her. She loves him with everything she is, and that has never been in question. But there is a small part of his head, the voice that he wants to be rid of, once and for all, and it’s telling him that no one wants him around. It has proven true so far.

She brings him in, hangs up his jacket and leads him into the parlour, holding his hands. They sit on a couch for hours, in silence, with her wrapped around him like a human blanket. She makes no moves to move away, is not shy about this. He needs the comfort, badly. The ungrudging human contact is – it’s a godsend. It’s heavenly. Mummy has always been small, and she fits around him, under his chin, and he’s a grown man, but there’s nothing, _nothing_ in the world that feels like this.

He wonders if John would fit – _no._

-

_“So Mary and I were talking to Angeline about the house and she was telling us about her sister-in-law who has a fabric shop—”_

_It’s an utterly banal conversation, filled with nonsensical information that Sherlock deletes almost as soon as he registers it, parsing through it quickly to check whether it has anything to do with John before quickly discarding it as useless. And then it hits him._

_“Who’s Angeline?” he asks, and it’s his first interruption in almost half an hour, the first indication that he’s actually listening._

_John looks surprised, then a little pleased that Sherlock is taking interest. Sherlock supposes he should be flattered that John still believes he can integrate Sherlock into his nice, normal life, filled with nice, normal neighbours and friends and babies and talk about schools and vegan diets and it’s so_ hateful _Sherlock could scream. He wants to be flattered, but it’s not-he’s not. He wouldn’t fit in. And John’s going to have to make a choice. And it’s not a real choice, because it was made when John asked Mary to marry him. They will have the best intentions, and they will try, because they are good people. But Sherlock will scandalise their neighbours and outrage their friends. It will be Sherlock, against their new life. And John hasn’t realised it yet._

_“I’ve told you about her,” he says, sounding a little confused now, because he must be seeing something on Sherlock’s face that’s giving him away. Sherlock shakes his head, because no, he hasn’t._

_“She’s a friend of mine and Mary’s – she works as a florist? I’m sure I’ve told you about her!” John says, more outraged than the situation merits, and Sherlock knows that John gets it._

_He shakes his head, and John falls silent. It’s beginning. They are falling apart._

_It’s only a matter of time before they see each other barely once a month, and send the occasional Christmas card. It’s only a matter of time before John moves house and forgets to tell Sherlock where he lives. It’s only a matter of time before they unravel. It has begun._

-

He spends long days there, sat quietly in a room with his mother, his head buried in a book, or reading through long-forgotten books of sheet music. It is a sanctuary from the world outside which buffets him like a storm. He logs in to his inbox once, and then logs out quickly. There’s a single email from Lestrade, asking him if he’s okay. No one else has noticed him missing.

He doesn’t know why he’s surprised. He’s always been the master of hiding in plain sight.

-

_When Lestrade bursts into the flat, Sherlock is not in the living room. Sherlock is not in the kitchen, or the bathroom. But Mrs. Hudson has said he hadn’t left. Sherlock is not visible. Sherlock is not in his own bedroom._

_Neither of them could be sure why Lestrade had thought to look in John’s bedroom, but he had. Sherlock refuses to be embarrassed about it, because it’s not John’s bedroom anymore, and he can sleep where he likes. But he stands up and leads the other man to the living room, in silence._

_“Sherlock—”_

_“Don’t. Just. Please.”_

_Sherlock knows very well that Lestrade is not an idiot, even if it’s fun to tease him. And a blind man could deduce what is happened; Lestrade is not blind at all._

_He’s not sure how John hasn’t seen it, yet._

_He’s not sure if it hurts more to think that John hasn’t being paying attention, or if it hurts more to think that John has noticed, and simply chosen to not say anything. Lestrade takes him out for a drink and Sherlock goes with him, and they sit in silence, because there’s nothing that could be said to make this better._

-

“Sherlock Holmes is in love with John Watson.” Sherlock flinches when his father says it. There’s no reason for his response, because if his mother knows it, his father does too. But he flinches anyway, because having the words said out loud makes it more real. And it’s different, with his father, whom he doesn’t think has done a single insensible thing in his life.

He nods, still silent. He wants to be a little boy again. Being in this house is making things simultaneously easier and more difficult, because it reminds him of a time when things were simpler, and less complicated. He wants to hide in the closet under the stairs, where it’s dark and it smells like lavender, and nothing has changed in thirty years. Instead, he’s sitting on a chaise in the lounge, pretending to read a book of which he doesn’t even know the name.

“Then don’t be Sherlock Holmes.”

He wants to scoff. He wants to laugh, because surely it’s easier said than done. So much – his identity is intrinsic to him. He is the one and the only, London’s singular consulting detective. He’s lost everything, and if he loses his name, he thinks he’ll have nothing left holding him to the ground, and he’ll either float into the clouds or sink into the sand and never be found again. And then again, maybe that’s the point.

“It _is_ difficult, Sherlock. I know. It’s not going to get any easier. John Watson has no idea that you love him. So maybe distance is best, for now? Sherlock Holmes is a creature of London. If you leave London, if you stop doing the things that make Sherlock Holmes who he is, then maybe you won’t feel like Sherlock Holmes. Maybe it will be easier to get some peace?” His father’s voice is gentle, tone carefully modulated. Sherlock has always known that he cares for his sons, just as much as his wife does. That they have different ways of showing it is irrelevant. His father’s advice is unconventional, but it rings true.

John would have said he was running away. But at this point, it is a decision between running away, and fading into nothing. A poet had called it the vanishing sickness and Sherlock had laughed at it, once, when he had been much younger. He hadn’t believed that a person’s self-worth could be so dependent on another person’s regard. That was before he’d met John, and discovered that his sole purpose in life was to make him smile.

His father is right, and then his mind is running in overdrive, planning.

When his mother wants to get away from something, she plays tourist and drags her father along with her. The game is enough to distract her from her problems. He’s been out of London for a long time, but he hasn’t been playing tourist. He’s been working. He’s been Sherlock Holmes all the while. Maybe it’s his turn to play tourist and get his mind off the utter failure that his personal life has become.

“Thank you, Father.”

It’s been years since Sherlock’s thanked anyone. But if he’s not going to be Sherlock Holmes, and _god_ knows he doesn’t want to be him anymore, he’d best get started.

-

_He dreams of dancing. Of wearing his good shoes, and his best coat, and a flower in his button hole. He dreams of a perfect partner. He’d stand at the right height, and he’d trust Sherlock to lead. He’d move his hips just right, and his feet would be solid and sure and they’d smile at each other and it would be absolutely perfect._

_Dancing is beautiful. There is a purity to it, because once you knew the steps, it was clean, and uncomplicated. That was not to say it was thoughtless, because rhythm and emotion were important for dancing too. But it was uncomplicated because dancers, like all artists, were different when the music came on. It didn’t matter what happened the rest of the time, or who they were when they were off stage. When it was their time, and they started counting beats, everything would be placed aside; every thought would be in line, and perfectly matched. Every movement would be pure, and perfect._

_He dreams of dancing like he hasn’t in years, waltzes and foxtrots and jazz dances and ballets, quick steps and precise movements, muscles snapping into place and bending like they were double jointed, choreographed years in advance but movements still fluid enough to bend to the music. He dreams of finding someone to dance with, who would drop everything to help him clear his head. Someone who would anticipate his every move, who would understand his intent, and adjust accordingly. Someone who’d trust him to carry his weight._

_In his dreams, he finds this partner, and he is perfect. His feet move without thought, because it’s all muscle memory by now, and he focuses on the heat of the body in his arms, of the comfort. The man is short, and golden and warm. He smells like jumpers and baked goods and hospital antiseptic, and Sherlock_

_-_

wakes up devastated. 


End file.
